Bus-crash fatalities unusual in Utah

A commercial bus crashes in Utah about every four days, though it rarely results in a fatality.

There were 462 accidents in the state involving buses from 2002 through 2006, an average of 92 per year, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Nine of them were fatal, leaving 14 people dead, and 265 caused injuries to 461 people. Half the deaths occurred in one accident on Mount Nebo in 2002.

"It's something that every motor coach operator is concerned about, but the big perspective is motor coach travel has historically been a very safe way to travel and continues to be," said Steve Lewis, president of Salt Lake-based Lewis Stages, Utah's largest private transportation company. "It's very sensational when we have an accident."

Nine people died and 2 dozen were injured Jan. 6 when an Arrow Stage Lines tour bus overturned in remote San Juan County. The bus carried 51 Phoenix-area skiers returning from a trip to Telluride, Colo.

FMCSA defines a bus as a vehicle with seating for at least nine passengers, including the driver, which is driven for compensation. It oversees some 3,700 registered interstate bus companies, including 20 in Utah, which operate about 34,000 motor coaches, minibuses and vans.

Bus travel has gained momentum in the United States the past few years. According to the American Bus Association, there were 631 million passengers trips in 2006, nearly as many as commercial airlines carried that year.

Nationally, crashes involving private buses are trending upward, going from 7,039 in 2002 to 11,237 in 2006, according to FMCSA. The number of fatal accidents and the number of fatalities, however, has remained at around 330 per year over that period. Fatalities include people who died in vehicles that collided with buses.

Passenger deaths in bus crashes are relatively low. There were 48 fatal motor-coach crashes — ones in which passengers or drivers died — in the United States from 1996 to 2005, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. An average of 14 passengers per year died in those wrecks.

Of those, 29 percent were rollovers. Passengers were ejected in 56 percent of the wrecks. Among all accidents during that time, 65 percent were single-vehicle crashes

where a bus ran off the road, hit a roadside object or rolled over.

"My impression is that crash rates for buses are quite low in comparison to other vehicle types," said Dan Blower, director of the Center for National Truck and Bus Statistics at the University of Michigan.